The jazz afterlife of Glenn Gould's piano

My prodigious colleague Doug Fischer wrote this article in the Citizen‘s Books pages today about Katie Hafner’s book A Romance on Three Legs. That fine read tells the story of Glenn Gould’s beloved Steinway piano, also known as Steinway CD318.

Doug finds only one significant fault with the book — that Hafner did not write about the instrument once it came to Ottawa’s Library and Archives Canada auditorium in 1983. This blog entry seeks to fill that gap, and in general add some jazz grace notes to Hafner’s otherwise thorough research.

First, I’ll note that long before Steinway CD318 came to Ottawa, it had become part of jazz lore. It’s the instrument that Bill Evans used when he recorded Conversations with Myself 45 years ago.

As Peter Pettinger relates in his biography of Evans, How My Heart Sings: “Evans was using Glenn Gould’s cherished Steinway, an instrument upon which much attention had been lavished by its makers, and the one that Gould used exclusively after 1960. In Evans’s hands (as in Gould’s) the instrument exuded quality, sounding rich and alive in spite of poor tuning… Gould — himself a connoisseur of Evans’s work — finished recording the Bach D major Partita on it soon after hearing Bill’s recording.”

Pettinger noted that the Conversation with Myself sessions took everything that Evans had. “He began to suffere from heroin withdrawal… but he insisted on completing the job. Helen Keane and Gene Lees, deferring to his resolve, turned the lights down low and lent their heartfelt encouragement.” The disc won Evans the first of his Grammy awards. The British magazine Melody Maker picked Conversations with Myself as its Jazz Record of 1964.

In as many years as the Ottawa International Jazz Festival has staged concerts at Library and Archives Canada, storied jazz musicians have played on CD318. More than a few have appreciated the fact that they were laying hands on Gould’s treasured piano.

At a 2004 jazz festival concert, before his trio performed, pianist Bill Mays, shown below, quipped: “I sat down to play a bebop piece and Bach’s F-major Invention came out.”

Before his 2006 Ottawa International Jazz Festival show, Brad Mehldau wrote to me that he was a serious Gould fan — what other kind of fan would Mehldau be? — and was looking forward to playing CD318 as a result.

“It’s certainly a great honour” to play Gould’s piano, Mehldau said in an e-mail interview. “Glenn Gould continues to amaze me anew, because his recording output was so huge and varied, luckily for all of us… His playing always leads me to some insight about playing the piano, and also about music in general — what it can be, how far it can go.”

More than a few jazz fans have similar reactions to Mehldau’s playing, which will be heard later this month in Confederation Park as part of this year’s OIJF.

I asked Fred Hersch if he had any recollections of playing CD318 during his 2005 jazzfest show, and he wrote back: “As a piano obsessive, I am sure I will find that [Hafner] book of interest. I know that I played that piano the last time I was in Ottawa, but don’t know that I could be too specific about my feelings for it. Of course as a Gould-o-phile I was aware that it was his and I believe I enjoyed playing on it but I don’t remember it knocking me out or anything as an instrument.”

Indeed, as Hafner’s book relates, the Gould piano suffered a serious injury from which it never really recovered, having been dropped in the early 1970s.

Pianist John Stetch, shown below playing CD318, may not have known this, but his fingers had sensed that something was amiss. He wrote me: “I’ve always liked Glenn Gould’s piano at the Library, but I’m pretty sure that it has changed a lot, starting with the first seasonal or humidity change after his death. I heard that for a while no work except tuning could be done on it, which seems a little like a macabre, time-released joke (with the butt of the joke being each subsequent generation of pianists who perform on it). After many years, I was glad to be told that action regulation was done and parts were replaced. I think the main element in a piano that sometimes will survive longer than other elements is the soundboard quality, and Glenn’s piano seemed to always be quite nice and resonant. It’s always been an honour to play it, but I will never know what it really felt like and sounded like back in the ’70s”

No one is playing CD318 at all these days. It’s on loan to the Canadian Museum of Civilization, where it’s on display. Any jazzfest pianists performing this month at Library and Archives Canada’s auditorium will have to use a rental. That’s a bummer, I say. Yes, the piano was never the same after its grievous tumble decades ago. But for it to be utterly untouched seems like insult upon injury.

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